Recognition
by brainchild
Summary: It took seven years for Sirius to see Lily Evans as a person. And even longer to understand why his best mate's girlfriend confused him so much.


Recognition

Lily Evans had never really occurred to Sirius as a person before seventh year.

Of course, she was a pretty girl who laughed a lot and was in all of his classes, so he knew who she was. Hell, everyone knew who she was. Whom.

Lily Evans, first year with a high ponytail who served the first detention of anyone in their year for being caught out after hours.

Lily Evans, second year who caught the Quaffle that fell into the Gryffindor stands when everyone else jumped out of the way.

Lily Evans, the third year who tamed a Hippogriff and laughed when the ugly thing nudged her in the face.

Lily Evans, fourth year who was still close with that smarmy Slytherin Snape. Who talked to him in Potions class and ignored James. Who glared when people told her she was crazy.

Lily Evans, fifth year who screamed at James Potter after their O.W.L.s and turned down a date and had her best mate call her a Mudblood in front of a dozen people, and yelled right back.

Lily Evans, sixth year Prefect who let most everyone get away with everything, and ignored Snape and hated James.

Lily Evans, seventh year, Head Girl, and suddenly Sirius Black's best mate's girl.

A real live person who plopped herself down in the middle-left of Sirius's life, a strange anomaly with laughing eyes and a bright smile. Who charmed the shit out of the professors and students and anyone who happened to glance her way.

"What are you doing?" the girl herself asked him when she found him leaning against a window ledge late one afternoon at the end of their seventh year.

"Thinking about you," Sirius said honestly.

"That's creepy," she said with an easy smile. "You aren't planning my murder or anything like that, right?"

He shook his head, long hair fringe brushing past his eyes. "Nah. Then I'd have to deal with James being all mopey."

"And you'd have to deal with the hassle of hiding the body," Evans said, twisting around to lean against the stone ledge beside him. "And we both know you're awful at being sneaky."

He laughed with her. He was the sneakiest person either of them knew. Hell, he was half the reason Remus hadn't been caught with his boring lies about ill aunts. The other half was James, who was actually one of the least sneaky people either of them knew, and the gap between he and Sirius was widening.

"Why were you wandering the castle?" he asked.

"Trying to find and punish a couple troublemakers before the Leaving Feast tomorrow night. Gryffindor's still down to Hufflepuff by twenty points," she said, putting her hair up in a ponytail and tapping her foot. She was as restless as James.

There was a time when her blatant favoritism would have surprised him, back before he realized she had emotions.

She liked things. People. She loved class and the professors. Genuinely liked learning and thinking and being taught. It was strange, but not oppressive, since she didn't try to force this love off on others, for which Sirius was grateful because James already liked Transfiguration enough. Another class would have been too much.

"You're a strange bird, Evans."

"Well, you only have to deal with me one more day," she said, pushing off the wall and taking her hair down again.

"Right," he said sarcastically, his elbows pressed against the glass behind him. Like James would ever let Evans leave.

"It's true. School's ending in less than forty eight hours," she said with a smile, glancing out the window. "And then we're cut loose into the wild."

James didn't think of the end of school that way, Sirius knew. When James bothered to think about it at all, he thought of leaving school as nothing more than the next step—as easy as coming to Hogwarts had been for him. He would walk off that train in two days certain of his future, friends, job, and family. Strange that he'd ended up with someone like Evans as a girlfriend—and Sirius as a best mate—who felt like they were losing something when school ended.

"What's your plan, then?" he asked, resting his hands on the cool stone in the heat of the day. "For afterward."

Her green eyes danced. "I don't believe in plans, Sirius. I thought you knew that."

"Right," he said indulgently, though she was probably being honest; she was like that.

Evans twisted her hair into a knot again, holding it in place with both hands. "I don't even know where I'm going to live."

"Being a street person's not so bad." He and James had spent three weeks of the summer after fifth year sleeping in parks and random hotels and friend's houses the until Mr. Potter finally caught up with them and brought them home.

She let her hair fall as she grinned.

"Just keep your wand close. I hear bums are handsy, and then James would have us fighting for your honor or something stupid like that, and it'd be a mess."

Evans laughed, leaning her head back to look up at the paintings on the ceiling of cherubs playing on clouds. "I always thought I'd take a gap year like my sister did between secondary and university, but with everything the way it is, taking an extended holiday seems a bit wrong."

'A bit' was _a bit_ of an understatement.

"I'll figure it out, though," she said without doubt. "I'm not worried."

She never was.

"The Potters would take you in," he said with his hands in his pockets.

The look she gave him was less than flattering.

"They took me in," he said defensively.

"Taking in a ragamuffin best mate who also happens to be a cousin is different than housing their teenage son's girlfriend," she pointed out.

The problem with Lily Evans being a real person now was that Sirius couldn't reply the way he wanted to the girl who was slowing taking over his best mate's life. It was on the tip of his tongue to say the meanest thing possible—that she could go huddle over her dead parents' graves for all he cared—but he didn't. Because James would punch him in the face.

And because, well… because Sirius actually didn't mind her the way he thought he should. In fact, he sort of enjoyed her. Because she wasn't just some little girl in his year who had landed the first detention and still wound up a Prefect. She wasn't just a vague idea of a girl that his best mate couldn't get out of his head.

She was Lily Evans, person, now. Who glared at Snape but wouldn't let James hurt him. Who didn't suck up to teachers, just made them love her. Who was so blindingly different than just about anyone in his life that Sirius sometimes found himself just wondering if she was just putting on a big show.

He knew he was.

So when he learned that her sister was evil and parents were dead, he was sort of glad. It was something he understood about her.

And something he thought he understood about James.

James was always accidentally fixing people. Giving Wormtail and Moony friends when they needed them. Giving Sirius a family. James was good like that, without even thinking about it.

"You'll move in with James," Sirius said, pushing off the wall.

"That would be a scandal, wouldn't it?" But she didn't sound unhappy about the thought. "Muggle-born and Pureblood shacking up."

Sirius walked down the corridor beside the girl who came up to his nose. "It wouldn't be a Muggle-born and Pureblood. It'd be Evans and Potter. No one would be surprised."

"We are sort of scandalous already, aren't we?" she asked, clearly pleased with the thought.

Again the words came to mind—_yeah, you're scandalous; he's the mortal enemy of your best-mate who was actually a Mudblood-hating-Death-Eater_. But Sirius didn't exactly fault her for not hating Snivellus right away (or even now when she really should have). Sirius had once actually cared about his brother, after all, and she had heard one of their worst fights and been able to look him in eye afterward without giving him that stupid pitying girl look.

"Though I've never had to escape the police with James like you," Evans said thoughtfully, "so I still have some work to do to catch up in the scandalous department."

"Oi, you two, what are you doing that's scandalous?" came James's voice from behind them, sounding as offended as he could. Sirius didn't even have to look over at Evans after he turned to give his friend an amused look to know that she was beaming at him like she had been doing ever since she stopped thinking he was a toerag.

"Talking about shacking up with you," she answered easily, hand on her hip.

"Both of you? I don't think that'd be scandalous," James agreed, wrapping an arm around Evans's waist and pulling her close as the three began walking in the original direction of the Kitchens.

"It'd be scandalous if there were only one bed that we all had to share," Evans said reasonably.

"I call the middle," Sirius said automatically, and James shoved him roughly into the wall. Sirius and Evans just laughed.

"You could have the couch," James said. "Outside the locked bedroom."

"That's what I get for seven years of solid friendship?" Sirius asked. "Chucked onto the couch in favor of the girl who hated you until a few months ago?"

He could have made it meaner. All of them knew that. He walked a tightrope with his tone, because he was telling the truth.

"You wouldn't be tossed aside," Evans said, easing the tension in that particular way of hers that made Sirius so confused about her general existence. "We'd have a spare bedroom with soundproof wards for you."

"Why can't your room be soundproof so I can wander around the flat?" Sirius wanted to know, goading.

"Because we might want to have sex in the kitchen or on the couch," James said before Evans slapped a hand over his mouth.

"Because it'd be our flat," Evans said pointedly, letting her hand drop away from James's amused face. She never seemed comfortable explicitly sharing their relationship details with others (rather than just alluding to sex through the need for soundproof wards). Sirius thought that was pretty stupid. He was the first person James had talked to after he'd lost his virginity.

"Oh whatever," Sirius said, waving her off. "You know, James, that she doesn't even plan to live with you."

"What?" James actually stopped walking to stare at Evans.

"Yep, she just told me so," Sirius said, unable to keep the smirk off his face when she turned to glare at him. "Guess she doesn't think you're in it for the long haul."

Evans's eyes narrowed at the challenging look he shot her.

"Why wouldn't you live with me?" James asked, not giving her a chance to address a very smug Sirius.

"Because we're only seventeen?" Evans said, as if she had ever been _only_ seventeen. Sirius had never met anyone less'_only _seventeen'than Lily Evans.

"She said she didn't think your parents would take her in because they'd think she was a hussy," Sirius said, really enjoying this moment, this pointed teasing that kept him on the right side of hurtful.

"I hate you," Evans said bluntly to Sirius and without real feeling.

"My parents don't think you're a hussy," James said, making Sirius really smile.

"I didn't say they did," Evans replied, pointing to Sirius. "He's being sneaky."

Sirius couldn't let that go. "You just said I was awful at being sneaky a few—"

"You need to learn to interpret tone," Evans said, her eyes sparkling.

"You're going to live with me," James said, ignoring the entire side argument that Sirius had stirred together so easily.

"Oh, is that right?" Evans asked, still in a bit of snit about not clearing up all the things Sirius had claimed she had said.

"Yeah," James said, using that sincere tone that had helped his mates avoid so many detentions. "Maybe not right away because you'll move in with one of your girl mates and I'll move in with Sirius, but you're still coming with me when we leave."

There it was, that confidence in the future, in his plans and friendships. Sirius just shook his head. He knew he'd be fine with whatever happened next, but James knew he'd excel. He was lucky that he'd become obsessed with a girl who wasn't afraid of anything.

"Maybe," Evans said, but she was smiling and there wasn't any doubt.

"We'll still have to do something illegal together first," James said, grinning at Sirius. "Proper initiation and all that. See if you're up to the challenge."

"Maybe we can do that while she's living as a street person," Sirius suggested, making Evans glare as she tried to fight off a smile. She enjoyed the game.

"That would only impress my future hobo mates if you did it on a dangerous motorbike," Evans said. As if Sirius would ever let anyone other than himself drive his bike. James wasn't even allowed, though he mostly didn't care.

"Nah," James said. "It'll have to be something unique."

"Maybe once she's in jail you'll be able to force her to meet your parents," Sirius said, which made Evans roll her eyes.

"Though that might not make the best first impression," Evans said.

"Mum would just laugh and post bail, like she did for Sirius," James said, nudging his friend.

"Sure, right after she buys you a place to live with Evans," Sirius teased, though it wasn't entirely a joke. Mrs. Potter was dead cool, and might just do something like that. Especially since even a blind mole rat knew that Mrs. Potter would _adore_ Evans.

"Well, if he and I ever actually move in together," Evans said to Sirius when they were walking again, "I'll expect you to take him out a lot to keep us from driving each other mad."

_If_, she still said. As if the entire world didn't know that Evans and Potter were freaking inevitable. Because their world was ending and war was starting, and James was taking Evans with him. So Sirius was, too, in a way.

Sirius sometimes wished he could hate Lily Evans, who lost her parents and didn't hate the world, who had a crap sister and evil ex-best mate, but turned in all her bloody work on time, and practiced Charms for fun. Who pushed James in the lake when they were finally outside on their second to last day at Hogwarts after James had already shoved Sirius unexpectedly into the water, who jumped in herself a moment later in all her clothes.

Who reminded Sirius of himself, if he had been a better person.


End file.
